On Sunday, October
2, a 4-page advertising section in the MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL announced
contests, honoring Martin Luther King, Jr. There will be speech contests,
art contests, and writing contests for students in Milwaukee schools.
We Energies is the sponsor of the speech contest. Brady, a manufacturer
of identification products is the sponsor of the art contest. The MILWAUKEE
JOURNAL SENTINEL is the sponsor of the writing contest. The theme chosen
by The Milwaukee Teachers Education Association for all the contests is,
'EDUCATION AND LEARNING HAVE BECOME TOOLS FOR SHAPING THE FUTURE'.

I could hardly believe
my eyes. How many of us have been writing for the past 20, 30, and 40
years to warn people of the fact that the schools are using children to
shape the future? Now, right out in the open for everyone to see and read,
educators are admitting it. Children at all levels will be writing, speaking
and making pictures about it as if shaping the future were a nice and
simple thing every child from kindergarten through high school should
understand and promote.

How can shaping the
future be so easy? Auguste Comte (1798-1857), the father of sociology
and the religion of humanity, devoted his entire intellectual life to
plans for shaping the future. He published his six volume Positive Philosophy
(1828-1842), System of Positive Polity (SPP), four volumes (1851-1854)
, and Catechism of the Positive Religion, (CPR) (1852) to instruct his
followers about methods to shape the future.

Children, the following
are some of the things Comte had to say about what needed to be done to
shape the future. Do you understand? Give a speech. Make a picture. Write
an explanation.

1. REPLACE CHRISTIANITY
WITH POSITIVE RELIGION.

EXCLUDE SERVANTS
OF GOD -- In the name of the past and of the future, the servants of humanity
-- both its philosophical and its practical servants come forward to claim
as their due the general direction of this world. Their object is to constitute
at length a real providence in all departments,--moral, intellectual,
and material. Consequently they exclude once for all from political supremacy
all the different servants of God -- Catholic, Protestant, or Deist --
as being at once behindhand, and a cause of disturbance. -- Comte quote
from Encyclopedia Britannica, Fourteenth Edition, "Auguste Comte," Volume
6, Page 191.

SPIRITUAL REORGANIZATION
-- The object of our philosophy is to direct the spiritual reorganisation
of the civilised world. . . A new basis for morality is being gradually
laid down. . . No important step in the progress of Humanity can now be
made without totally abandoning the theological principle. . . Positivism
proves more efficient than theology. SPP, vol. 1, P35,14,15,28

WOMAN PRIESTESS --
Woman is the spontaneous priestess of Humanity. . . All classes must be
brought under women's influence, for all require to be reminded constantly
of the great truth that reason and activity are subordinate to feeling.
SPP, Vol. I, P.183.

WORSHIP OF WOMEN
-- In a word the new doctrine will institute the worship of Woman, publicly
and privately, in a far more perfect way than has ever before been possible.
It is the first permanent step towards the worship of Humanity. SPP, Vol.
I, 205.

2. ABOLISH MONARCHY

MONARCHY IS RETROGRESSION
-- Politically, the only irrevocable point is the abolition of monarchy,
which for a long time has been in France and to a less extent throughout
the West, the symbol of retrogression. SPP, Vol. I. P. 93

LAST VESTIGE OF THEOCRACY
-- At the present day to wish to abolish royalty in Russia would be even
more absurd than to pretend to establish it again in France, although
ultimately it must cease everywhere as being the last vestige of Theocracy.
SPP, Vol. III., P. xxxvii.

3. INSTITUTE AND
EXPAND COMMUNISTIC PRINCIPLE

POSITIVISTS ADOPT
PRINCIPLE OF COMMUNISM -- So far, therefore, the fundamental principle
of Communism is one which the Positivist school must obviously adopt.
Positivism not only confirms this principle, but widens its scope, by
showing its application to other departments of human life; by insisting
that, not wealth only, but that all our powers shall be devoted in the
true republican spirit to the continuous service of the community. The
long period of revolution which has elapsed since the Middle Ages has
encouraged individualism in the moral world, as in the intellectual it
has fostered the specialising tendency. But both are equally inconsistent
with the final order of modern society. SPP V1. P124

COMMUNISM LEADS TO
POSITIVISM -- Communists are, without knowing it, preparing the way for
the ascendancy of Positivism. SPP, Vol. I., P130.

4. LIMIT EDUCATION
& ESTABLISH SOCIOLOGICAL CONTROL

MENTAL EDUCATION
SUBORDINATE TO SOCIAL SYMPATHIES -- No one knows so well as the Positivist
that the principal source of real morality lies in direct exercise of
our social sympathies, whether systematic or spontaneous. He will spare
no efforts to develope these sympathies from the earliest years by every
method which sound philosophy can indicate. It is in this that moral education,
whether private or public principally consists; and to it mental education
is always to be held subordinate. SPP, Vol. I. P. 80.

USELESS ACADEMIC
STUDIES -- Education thus will from the beginning have its goal marked
out for it, and will thus never be wasted in useless academic studies.
SPP, Vol. II., P. 299.

SERVICE TO HUMANITY
-- Everything we have belongs then to Humanity; for everything comes to
us from her--life, fortune, talents, information, tenderness, energy,
etc. . . The whole of the Positive education, intellectual as well as
affective, will familiarise us thoroughly with our complete dependence
on Humanity, so as to make us duly feel that we are all necessarily meant
for her unintermitting service. CPR, P. 213.

HIGH PRIEST OF HUMANITY
-- The sixty republics of the regenerated West will have no other habitual
bond than a common education, community of manners and customs, and common
festivals. . . The High Priest of Humanity will be, more truly than any
medieval pope, the only really Western Chief. CPR P. 248

5. CONTROL THE
ENVIRONMENT TO CONTROL MAN & CLAIM LAND

ENVIRONMENT CONTROLS
MANKIND -- In order then to regulate or to combine mankind, Religion must
in the first instance place man under the influence of some external Power,
possessed of superiority so irresistible as to leave no sort of uncertainty
about it. This great principle of social science is at bottom merely the
full development of that primary notion of sound Biology--the necessary
subordination of every Organism to the Environment in which it is placed.
. . A sound theory of Biology thus furnishes the Positive theory of Religion
with a foundation wholly unassailable; for it proves the general necessity
for the constant supremacy of an external Power as a condition of unity
for man, even in his individual life. SPP, Vol. II., P. 12.

EARTH TO BELONG TO
THE GREAT BEING: -- The Great Being in its full prime, will take possession
of its domain, the Earth, marking its proprietorship by effecting all
the improvements compatible with the order of the whole, in accordance
with the principle that particular action must in all cases be subordinate
to the general unity. SPP, Vol. IV., P. 54.

HUMAN SPECIES RELATIONS
WITH ANIMAL RACES -- The last step in the systematic direction of Human
activity is the ordering of the largest relations, the relations of the
human species, as a collective personality, with all the animal races
amenable to discipline, with a view to making the order of things in which
we live as perfect as possible. SPP,Vol. IV, P. 311.

WORSHIP OF PLANTS
TO BE RESTORED -- They may thus be regarded as ministering to the necessities
of the Great Being, and merit our respect as the principal agents of material
providence. On them depends the possibility of combining the whole of
living nature in a vast and permanent struggle against the forces of inorganic
nature. The worship of Plants, spontaneously maintained for so long a
time, arose in a confused feeling of this participation. Grown obsolete
since the fall of Fetichism, these simple instincts of reverence will
be restored to their proper place by Positivism, which recognises the
duty of appropriating all that is really valuable in former systems. All
that is necessary for their incorporation into the final religion, is
to transpose the objective belief to the subjective point of view. Thus
transformed, these expressive signs give a new and nobler meaning to the
commonest actions of life. SPPV1, 481.

6. DESTROY MORAL
AUTHORITY AND CRUSH PERSONALITY/INDIVIDUALISM

PERSONALITY ABOLISHED
-- We must get rid of personality in every shape, even of the personality
of an imaginary being, if we would found a powerful and enduring discipline
in the name of humanity. SPP, Vol.IV.249.

HEART OVER INTELLECT
-- All those who have formed a sound judgment of the recent progress of
Positivism may now judge, by comparing the past with the present, of the
impulse that has been given to the full development of my philosophical
task; consisting in the entire systematisation of human life on the basis
of the preponderence of the heart over the intellect. SPP. Vol. I. P.
xvi.

REASON AND ACTIVITY
SUBORDINATE TO FEELING -- All classes, therefore, must be brought under
women's influence, for all require to be reminded constantly of the great
truth that Reason and Activity are subordinate to Feeling. SPP,Vol. I.,
P. 183.

INDIVIDUAL LIFE HAS
NO EXISTENCE -- The only real life is the collective life of the race;
individual life has no existence except as an abstraction SPP, Vol. 1,
P. 292.

FORCE AS BASIS OF
GOVERNMENT -- Social science would remain for ever in the cloud-land of
metaphysics, if we hesitated to adopt the principle of Force as the basis
of Government. SPP V2, 247.

DIMINISH INFLUENCE
OF CHARACTER -- When the system is fully regulated, the effect of this
will be to secure greater unity by diminishing the influence of personal
character. SPP, Vol. II. P. 237.

GIVE UP RIGHT TO
FREE INQUIRY -- The requisite convergence of the best minds cannot be
obtained without voluntary renunciation on the part of most of them, of
their sovereign right to free inquiry. Positive Philosophy of Auguste
Comte, Translated by Harriet Martineau, George Bell, London, 1896, Vol.
II., P. 170.

HUMANITY SUBSTITUTES
FOR GOD -- Everywhere the relative definitively takes the place of the
absolute, and altruism tends to bear down egoism, whilst a systematic
method takes the place of a spontaneous evolution. In a word, Humanity
definitively substitutes herself for God, without ever forgetting his
provisional services. CPR, P. 294.

7. CONTROL PUBLIC
OPINION

THE PUBLIC IS THE
JUDGE -- Again, the primary principle of Positivism, which is to judge
every question by the standard of social interests, is in itself a direct
appeal to Public Opinion; since the public is naturally the judge of the
good or bad effect of action upon the common welfare. Under theological
and metaphysical systems no appeal of this sort was recognised; because
the objects upheld as the highest aims of life were purely personal. SPP,
Vol. I. P. 111.

PROPER ORGANIZATION
OF PUBLIC OPINION -- Having defined the sphere within which Public Opinion
should operate, we shall find little difficulty in determining the conditions
requisite for its proper organisation. These are, first, the establishment
of fixed principles of social action; secondly, their adoption by the
public, and its consent to their application in special cases; and, lastly,
a recognised organ to lay down the principles, and to apply them to the
conduct of daily life. SPP, Vol. I. P. 112.

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CREATION OF PUBLIC
OPINION -- Thus working men and philosophers are mutually necessary, not
merely in the creation of Public Opinion, but also in most cases in the
manifestation of it. Without the first, the doctrine, however well established,
would not have sufficient force. Without the second, it would usually
be too incoherent to overcome those obstacles in the constitution of man
and of society, which make it so difficult to bring practical life under
the influence of fixed principles. SPP, Vol. I. P. 117. Click below for
part 2.

Erica Carle is an independent researcher and
writer. She has a B.S. degree from the University of Wisconsin. She has
been involved in radio and television writing and production, and has
also taught math and composition at the private school her children attended
in Brookfield, Wisconsin. For ten years she wrote a weekly column, "Truth
In Education" for WISCONSIN REPORT, and served as Education Editor for
that publication.